Violet Johnson is a student in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Biochemistry with a minor in Math. She’s passionate about self-expression and community engagement, something she takes part in as a lead vocalist in Menagerie, one of Penn’s pop-rock bands. Constantly learning and growing at Penn, Violet grounds herself with weightlifting and other forms of somatic wellness. She joined Penn’s female weightlifting community, Women Who Lift, in 2024 to find community in one of her favorite hobbies. Violet admires SNF Paideia’s pillars of wellness and service and hopes to integrate them into her passion for scientific research and healthcare advancement.
Passionate about bridging the gap between underserved populations and access to health care, Violet hopes to pursue a career in Biotechnological engineering and work in women’s health. She is committed to using what she learns from SNF Paideia’s pillars of citizenship and dialogue to strengthen the connection between scientific research and the communities it serves. Violet is an intern lab technician for Dr. Mark Goulian, where she studies the phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA and its impacts on phosphotransferase systems. Under Dr. Goulian, she has also undertaken independent research on e. Coli, investigating possible connections between the NDK gene and the function of the CAP-cAMP complex. During her time as an SNF Paideia Fellow, Violet looks forward to enriching her Penn education and becoming a better facilitator of dialogue.